Highlights of Winning
Teams
The Lucent Grease Masters Clean Up
At Lucent Technologies, teamwork is a way life. They
call their site in Columbus, Ohio the workplace of
the future with high-performance teams in place
company-wide. There’s commitment at all levels
to teamwork and participation.
“The whole organization is very
supportive of structured teams and team
efforts,” says Kathy Broderick, team
facilitator. “Teams are even more highly
regarded here in Columbus.” Lucent has formal
training for the teams in team dynamics, facilitation
and leadership skills. There is a seven-step process
in place for problem solving and process improvement
that each group follows and a five-pointed star model
is used to develop the high-performance teams. Each
point on the star represents: quality, cost,
delivery, human resources and environmental health
and safety. The teams range in size from 10-50
members.
Energy Crisis
Even with this training and support, the teams still
face their fair share of challenges. “Some
teams don’t work because the individuals are
not seriously committed,” says Broderick.
“Or because they do not have a strong enough
leader to pull them through the rocky roads of teams.
Every team has its ups and downs just like a family.
Without a mom or dad, a family will fall
apart.”
The biggest obstacles the teams have to face
are commitment and dedication. In addition to the
team efforts, the employees still have their regular
jobs and these efforts take a tremendous amount of
time.
The key to staying energized? Give the teams
the support and tools that they need to thrive.
“The biggest thing we see is that the meetings
keep them energized and enthused. When one is down
the other one gets them back up,” says
Broderick. “People have learned how to reach
one another in different situations. They are more
focused on their job and improving the workplaces.
They have learned that as a team they have a lot more
talent to work with and more ideas from a larger
variety of great minds.”
Lucent Gets a Grease Change
A team of intuitive minds from Lucent proved
themselves this past March at the National Team
Competition in Chicago, sponsored by AQP. The Grease
Masters team facilitated by Broderick was charged
with a goal of improving factory test yields for an
electronic circuit assembly process. Their objective
was to increase first test yields from an
unacceptable average of 60 percent to 85 percent. The
team used the seven-step process that was in place to
help them identify opportunity, focus, analysis,
action, results, deployment and future plans. With
quality in mind as the most important factor, the
team spent seven months researching the problems with
their process of assembling circuit packs, improving
the current methods and developing a solution by
changing from a thermal grease to a silicone grease.
These changes reduced their failures to less than two
percent and increased test yields to 92
percent.
Once they proved themselves at home by winning
Lucent’s internal competition, the team took
their project on the road and brought back the silver
award from the AQP competition. “The team is
still together on the same line and they have been
the highlight of the facility,” states
Broderick.
The Bottom Line
The Grease Masters’ team project produced a
cost savings of nearly $2 million, but the real
significance lies in what the team learned about how
teamwork and true participation improve quality and
make a difference in a company. “I’ve
learned that all problems can be solved with the
proper associates working together towards the same
goal,” says one team member. Broderick sums it
up, “This team was extremely diverse in many
ways: skills, education, background, job
responsibilities—everything. They identified a
problem that was unacceptable to their standards,
solved it and verified their results. They’re a
benchmark for other teams.”
Silver Winner: Grease Masters, Lucent
Technologies, Columbus, Ohio
Members: Roberta Anderson, Cathy
Broderick, Mark Calloway, JK Chrisley, Chris
Fanelli, Vivian Fetterman, Mary Beth Fries, Dee
Hopkins, Fred Keeler, Tony Ly, Becky McCoy, Jerry
Preece, Tom Wiecek
Project: Improve factory test yield for
an electronic circuit assembly process
Bottom line: Test yield improved from
62% to 92%, producing a cost savings of nearly $2
million.
Gold
winners
Bronze
winners
May
2001Homepage
My Kingdom
for a Team
